The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘My house tonight. Seven.’ To the man they now knew to be Gaston Mehre, he added: ‘It’s desperate. Terrible.’

  Harding had already phoned the controller of the Antwerp squad, giving the time when the shop would be empty that night. By then the search of Boulevard Anspach had been completed, listening devices installed in every room and telephone and all documentation McCulloch and Ritchie considered relevant copied and returned to where they had been found. There were thirty CIA and FBI agents dispersed around the house and along every road feeding into it.

  Smet didn’t dominate the conversation when Félicité Galan called. He told her about the discovery of the body and in reply to her obvious question said: ‘I don’t know if we’re going to meet this afternoon! The bastard wouldn’t say what was so important about what they’d found! Just that it was good. Important. I’m going to try Poncellet if they go on saying they’re too busy.’

  There was a long period of silence, interspersed with grunts and single-word agreement. Towards the end Smet complained: ‘I know they’re stupid. It’s too late now: too late for anything.’ To her unheard response to that, he said: ‘Kill myself.’

  His final words were: ‘Please, I’m begging you … I can’t help it … do it now …? When …? Now, it’s got to be now …’

  They were careful to keep the sequence in the proper order. Blake told Poncellet there appeared to be a useful amount of forensic clues connected with the body find that wouldn’t be analysed in time for any meeting that afternoon. Further contact from the woman in any case had priority. He said exactly the same to Smet, promising to call him again at the office or even at home that evening if there was any development. They all listened to Poncellet accurately recount his conversation with Blake to the other Belgian when Smet reached him.

  ‘It looks as if things are moving at last,’ said Poncellet.

  ‘They haven’t told you what it is?’

  ‘No.’

  Félicité did call McBride. Her attitude – her tone of voice even – was totally different from what it had been on any previous occasion. Claudine tried to involve herself – although not goading, alert to the change and careful to avoid antagonizing her – but the woman told her, without anger, to get off the line. Claudine did. After her earlier debacle, Hillary didn’t attempt to grab the telephone.

  ‘It’s a million.’

  ‘I know,’ said McBride.

  ‘It’s ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Deposit it at a branch of Crédit Lyonnais. You choose which. Tomorrow, precisely at 11 a.m., I’ll give you a bank and an account number into which it’s to be transferred. If it’s not in the account I designate by 11.30 a.m. Mary Beth will be killed. Understood?’

  ‘No, wait …

  ‘Shut up! You there, Claudine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pay attention and you’ll learn how a ransom exchange can be made to work.’

  The line went dead. The scanner failed to isolate the source of the call. It was, the technicians later insisted again, because it had been long distance, nowhere within the city limits.

  In his study McBride looked sideways to Claudine and said: ‘She didn’t sound the same.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Claudine. It wasn’t right: not right at all.

  ‘Am I going home?’ asked the child, urgently, as Lascelles entered the beach house.

  ‘Yes. But you’ve got to be very good,’ said Félicité.

  ‘I will be. Honest I will be.’ She smiled up at Lascelles and said: ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Are you going to take me home?’

  ‘Both of us,’ said the man.

  ‘Can I wear my new clothes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Félicité. ‘But hurry.’

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m not crying. The wind flicked my hair into my eyes.’ She’d actually been hoping the Luxembourg lawyer would tell her mat the bank chain hadn’t been established.

  As they got into Lascelles’ car Félicité said, in French: ‘You’re quite sure it won’t hurt?’

  ‘Positive. Pills will be best. For all of them.’

  ‘Mary Beth first,’ insisted Félicité. ‘I want to be the one to do it. It’s got to be me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  James McBride chose the nearest convenient bank, on the rue de Louvain, and Claudine used the absence of both the ambassador and the accompanying Harrison to issue the warning. Only Rosetti wasn’t there to hear it, back at the mortuary to conclude his finding with the Belgian pathologist. She replayed that afternoon’s brief tape and Blake said: ‘Yes. She sounds very different.’

  ‘It’s resignation,’ identified Claudine. ‘Practically from the time she snatched Mary Beth she’s been living a fantasy, her own private idyll. She’s fallen in love with the child, convinced herself she’s protecting her from everyone else – it will have been the rest of the group at first, now it’s probably me as well – but today some reality has come back. There’s still more fantasy than anything else but she’s accepting, although she probably doesn’t want to, that it’s coming to an end.’

  ‘How bad?’ queried Harding.

  ‘As bad as it could be.’

  ‘You want to spell that out a little clearer?’ asked Rampling.

  ‘I hoped the ransom would be enough. That making her hate me and then letting her have the money – beating me – would be sufficient …’ Claudine hesitated, the admission thick in her throat. ‘I don’t think that any longer.’

  ‘So the ransom’s not important any more?’ frowned Rampling.

  ‘Yes it is! She still has to beat me with that. But when the money’s handed over, she’s won.’

  ‘So by paying it we kill Mary Beth?’

  ‘We were always going to,’ reminded Claudine. ‘That’s why I argued against it from the beginning: turned it instead into a way of delaying things until we found her. She’s beaten us by getting out of her house.’

  ‘But you say she loves Mary!’ protested Rampling. ‘You don’t kill people you love!’

  ‘You do, if that love is absolute, to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. I’m the enemy.’

  ‘That’s fan—’ started Harding, stopping halfway through the protest.

  ‘Biblical, romantic fantasy,’ agreed Claudine. ‘I know. I wish I wasn’t so convinced I’m right.’

  ‘We don’t wait any longer,’ declared Harding. ‘We’ve got her house as tight as a drum, although she’s calling from some place outside the city. And we know where a bunch of them are going to be tonight. If Félicité isn’t back by then we hit Smet’s place. They’ll know where she’s got the kid. And we’ve got enough proof of murder to interrogate the shit out of them. They’ll tell us. And then we hit her.’

  ‘Tonight,’ agreed Rampling. ‘And we know Mary Beth’s safe until eleven thirty tomorrow morning. Everything’s going to work like clockwork.’

  ‘Let’s hope,’ said Claudine. It was five o’clock. It was going to be a long two hours.

  Smet arrived home at 5.30 p.m. There was the familiar sound of decanter against glass. The television was switched on, in anticipation of the main evening newscast.

  By then McBride had returned from depositing the $1,000,000 ransom to endorse (‘about goddamned time!’) the decision to raid the rue de Flandre and insist on being present at the rescue of his daughter. Hillary announced she would be there too. Claudine, concerned at the easy assumption that Mary Beth’s recovery was a foregone conclusion, didn’t explain her reasoning for recommending the assault and McBride didn’t ask. Instead he announced that he was going to speak to both State and the President by telephone. That guarantee of Washington support failed to reassure Elliot Smith, who remained uncertain of legal jurisdiction despite the assurance from Peter Blake that Europol, which he represented and from which, additionally, Commissioner Sanglier would shortl
y be arriving, had power of arrest in an EU country in which a serious crime had been committed and that the murder of the rent boy provided the justification.

  ‘After we get Mary Beth back the courts can argue about legality for as long as they like,’ dismissed McBride. ‘Do it!’

  To provide his promised legal authority Blake went with Harding physically to take part in the entry. That wasn’t to be until Rampling, who remained as liaison at the embassy, was satisfied from what he overheard that everyone whom Smet expected had arrived. A speaker was installed in the ambassador’s suite to relay from the communications room every sound picked up from the bugged house. Smet’s listening to the six o’clock news, upon which that day’s press release predicting major developments within the next twenty-four hours in the kidnap of Mary Beth McBride was the lead item, provided the sound test. It was perfect.

  Claudine attended each hurriedly convened discussion and contributed when asked – doubting there would be any physical resistance, although not ruling out a panicked suicide attempt – but fully accepted her subsidiary part in what was an operational field situation. She wasn’t, either, as affected as everyone else increasingly became by a tense, almost nervous, expectation. It wasn’t any real danger here, at the embassy, but on the ground mistakes were more likely in a nervous atmosphere.

  Still with almost an hour to go before the gathering at Smet’s home, Claudine decided to combine the background Kurt Volker had compiled from what had been taken from Félicité Galan’s house with what she had suggested before the woman had been identified. Practically all of it dovetailed. Even the video-fit pictures created from the descriptions of the two kidnap witnesses were reasonable representations of the four actual photographs that had been copied.

  Félicité’s passport put her at thirty-nine, to within three years of Claudine’s estimate. The town house, the itemized jewellery, the money in copied deposit and current bank accounts – in total the Belgian franc equivalent of almost $200,000 – as well as the dark green Mercedes attested to substantial wealth, which Claudine had also guessed. She had been prepared for Marcel still to be alive and one of the paedophile group but she wasn’t surprised to read in one of the several preserved obituary notices that Félicité’s late husband had been a leading Brussels stockbroker, the head of his own firm and a trading member of the city’s bourse. The several retained newspaper and magazine references to Félicité’s interest in and support for local charities didn’t surprise her, either. Nor that two of them involved the protection of children.

  Volker entered the briefing room as she was finishing comparing the computer reproductions with Félicité’s photographs.

  ‘I thought that was disappointing,’ said the German. ‘Those witnesses’ descriptions were remarkably good. And she’s reasonably well known, from the newspaper cuttings. Yet we didn’t get a single recognition.’

  ‘That’s human nature,’ said Claudine. ‘No one thought it could be Félicité because she’s far too respectable. They were frightened of making fools of themselves.’

  ‘Although it doesn’t show paedophilia there’s someone remarkably similar in one of the pornographic films that arrived yesterday through the Amsterdam outlet,’ said Volker. ‘Come and see what you think.’

  Only five operators remained in the computer room, now that the e-mail flood had dried to a trickle. They had been concentrated at the far end of the room, separated by a line of dead screens from Volker’s three-machine command post. There were two television sets immediately adjacent, a cassette still in the gate of one VCR.

  It was a lesbian orgy. Most of the participants were totally naked, several with dildoes strapped to their crotch as penises, others with manual vibrators. Without exception all the women wore grotesquely ornate animal or occult half-masks that left their mouths free. In almost every shot there were scenes of cunnilingus.

  ‘There!’ said Volker, freezing the frame to point to a heavily busted woman in a satyr’s headpiece. She was one of the performers wearing a dildo.

  Claudine made herself look away from another participant, studying the figure that had attracted Volker’s attention. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Look: there’s dark hair – brunette – showing beneath the mask at the forehead and at the nape of the neck. And the pubis is black.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed the German. ‘I thought that was a shadow.’ He restarted the film. ‘Looks like quite a party.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Claudine, looking back to the other participant.

  Henri Sanglier made a noisy entry and said: ‘I’ve been looking for everyone. What are you doing?’

  ‘I thought we had a connection but I was wrong,’ admitted Volker, as Claudine snapped the film off.

  ‘No need to waste time on it,’ Claudine said, leading the commissioner back out of the room.

  The devil’s mask had done nothing to hide Sanglier’s wife from Claudine, quite apart from the setting of the film. She at once recognized Françoise from the languid model’s grace with which the woman moved and from the extraordinarily long-fingered hands that had tried so hard to explore her. She hadn’t known about Françoise’s tiny bird tattoo, which matched that on the thigh of the woman upon whom Françoise was using a vibrator. But then she’d never allowed herself to get into a situation in which Françoise was naked, despite the woman’s persistent efforts.

  In addition to all of which it was the location of the film that was the easiest to identify. From the still unexplained dinner party to which Henri Sanglier had invited her and Rosetti, Claudine knew the panelled hallway and opulent, antique-crowded room beyond actually to be Sanglier’s manoir, on the road between The Hague and Delft. And so would anyone else who had been to the man’s home.

  The first to arrive, together, were greeted as Gaston and Charles.

  ‘It’s the antique dealer and his relative,’ confirmed Harding, over his mobile link. ‘Our guys followed them from Antwerp. They’re on their way back to you.’

  McBride, who’d made a help-yourself gesture towards the cocktail cabinet but been the only one to take a drink, Jack Daniel’s, sat hunched towards the huge speaker. Hillary was wearing her green safari suit.

  Smet said: ‘Everyone’s coming.’

  ‘Félicité?’ queried a voice.

  ‘Everyone except Félicité.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ It was Gaston.

  ‘Let’s wait for the others,’ said Smet.

  ‘It’s a fat guy,’ warned Harding, before the sound of the doorbell.

  Smet said: ‘You and I might have a lot of legal matters to talk about, Michel.’

  ‘A new name,’ Rampling told the watching FBI head. ‘Michel.’

  ‘We’ve got the car registration, for the full name,’ Harding assured him. Then: ‘Here’s another one!’

  ‘August,’ said Smet, at the door.

  ‘It’s the Belgacom executive,’ said Rampling, into his telephone.

  ‘From the back of the guy coming in now there’s a resemblance to the video-fit of the driver of the kidnap car,’ said Harding, as the sound of a bell echoed through the speaker. Smet opened and closed the door, without speaking. There was the sound of carpet-muffled footsteps.

  ‘It’s good that you all came,’ said Smet. ‘We’re at the very edge of disaster.’

  ‘They’re all there!’ declared Rampling.

  ‘Go!’ ordered Harding, not speaking to those listening in the ambassador’s study.

  They didn’t need the hydraulic rams to smash the door off its hinges. Blake rang the bell and Harding shouted, through a bullhorn and in remarkably good French: ‘Let us in, Smet. We’re ready to take the door down.’

  From the lounge window Dehane, his voice chipped by hysteria, said: ‘They’re everywhere! Swarming in!’

  Smet said: ‘Don’t say anything. There’s nothing to connect us with the girl,’ and then there was the sound of a lot of people all moving at once.

  Michel Blott was
the first to flee through the rear door, outside which McCulloch and Ritchie were waiting with a squad. McCulloch said: ‘Thanks for opening the door,’ and pushed past the fat lawyer.

  Henri Cool was cowering inside the rear hallway. When he saw the entering Americans he said: ‘Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!’ and began to cry.

  The Mehre brothers were standing in the middle of the main room, with Dehane. Gaston was holding the hand of the trembling Charles. Dehane kept repeating: ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

  Smet was taking the pistol from his mouth when McCulloch entered the bedroom. McCulloch said: ‘We distorted the pin. It won’t fire. I’ll help you jam it down your throat if you like.’

  By the time they were all brought back together in the lounge the still weeping Henri Cool had wet himself. So had Charles Mehre. He was also crying.

  In the ambassador’s study they heard Harding say: ‘OK. Which one of you is going to tell me where Félicité is, with Mary Beth?’

  ‘No!’ moaned Claudine.

  None of the men spoke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Henri Sanglier accepted at once that it would mean sacrificing a lot of potential personal benefit: he could no longer, for instance, claim to have masterminded the entire operation, which had been an early intention. But speed, at last with official knowledge and authority, was the only consideration now: how quickly they could recover the child. Which made the inevitable Belgian outrage an irritating delay and Claudine’s suggestion how best to overcome it a godsend. It also made McBride an urgent accomplice.

  It was the ambassador who pressed the Justice Minister (‘there is an absolutely essential political need that can’t be put off until tomorrow’) to meet them at the central police headquarters. Only when they arrived, within minutes of each other and ahead of anyone from the rue de Flandres, did Sanglier call Poncellet. The police commissioner said he could be there in ten minutes. Sanglier hoped that would be sufficient intervening time. He wished there’d been a justifiable reason to have Claudine remain part of the discussion.